Trend Toward Older Moms Accelerates

November 30, 1985|By Peter Francese, Cowles Syndicate

Despite what you may hear about the problem of pregnant teen-agers, most children are born to women who are 25 years old or older. Of the 3.6 million babies born in 1983 (the most recent year for which we have data) only 45.3 percent were born to women under 25. That represents a decline of about 4 percent in the last 20 years. By contrast, 31.5 percent of the babies in 1983 were delivered to women 25 to 29 years old, an increase of 6.5 percent.

Women 30 to 34 also increased their share of births, moving up 2.3 points to 17.2 percent. But because the majority of women no longer choose to have three, four or five more children, births to women 35 years old and over are down 4.4 points and now represent only 5.7 percent of all births.

The proportion of women who have their first child after 30 has been rising sharply, but not by enough to offset the big decline in large families.

Part of the reason for this delayed childbearing is because women are marrying later. The median age at first marriage for women is now 23 years. Another reason is that more young husbands and wives say they would rather work for several years to become more financially secure and be able to afford houses before having children.

Whatever the reason, the result is more older mothers -- and these more mature mothers appear to have at least two advantages over younger ones.

First, they are more likely to be college graduates. Nearly half of the women who have their first child after 30 are college graduates as opposed to 12 percent of such women under 30.

Second, older mothers have higher family incomes, mostly because they and their spouses have more experience in the labor force as well as more education.